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The Blue House (Hankyoreh photo archives)

Blue House Senior Presidential Secretary for Public Affairs Park Soo-hyun commented on the possibility of South Korean President Moon Jae-in attending the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which are scheduled to begin later this month.

“We’d like to see Japan approaching this with a more open attitude,” Park said.

“The right thing would be for the Japanese government to give an answer,” he added.

According to Park, it falls on Japan to respond to Seoul’s consistent messages about its hopes to hold a summit to resolve some of the complex tangle of issues in the two sides’ relations, including historical matters and export controls.

Park’s remarks came during an interview Wednesday on the MBC radio program “A Closer Look with Kim Jong-bae.”

“Whether or not we go to the ‘peace Olympics’ is not a matter for us to talk about considering or not considering,” he said.

“The idea that if we are going to go, we’d like to see a South Korea-Japan summit, we’d like to make progress in resolving the conflicts that have surfaced as issues — that’s not just what we want, that’s what Japan and everyone else want,” he added.

Noting that Japan was “very aware of our position,” he said, “The right thing now would be for the Japanese government to give answer in terms of ‘let’s have a summit now’ and ‘let’s have this be the agenda.’”

Park’s remarks were interpreted as expressing the position that Tokyo should propose a summit at a time when the question of Moon’s attendance at the Olympics’ opening ceremony has emerged as an issue of interest between the two sides.

Moon has yet to have a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga since the latter took office in September 2020. Moon had hoped to have at least an informal meeting with Suga during the G7 Summit in England last month, but that failed to come about as Suga dodged the South Korean President.

When asked if the Japanese government was “not sending any signals at all about wanting to have a summit with South Korea,” Park replied, “I can’t confirm that exactly, but I think the South Korean public might see it that way based on the current situation.”

“What is clear is that we are approaching things to the end with an open attitude,” he added.

By Lee Wan, staff reporter

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